Technical Briefing June 2026 - Update

Of interest to all working in corporate governance

FORTHCOMING REGULATION UPDATE

On 9 June, Blair McDougall MP, Minister for Small Business and Economic Transformation, gave a statement to the House of Commons which dealt with future changes to how accounts are filed at Companies House.

Members will recall that the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA) 2023 included a number of reforms to reporting and filing requirements, some of which will be carried forward through secondary legislation. Following the announcement from Companies House in June 2025 that these reforms would be implemented in April 2027, a number of organisations, including the Institute, expressed concerns about the impact on business and, as we flagged in the February Technical Briefing, on 28 January, the government announced that this date would no longer apply – “These reforms are under review given stakeholder concerns, to ensure we strike the right balance between tackling economic crime and avoiding undue burden on business. A final decision on the reforms will be announced shortly.  Companies will receive at least 21 months’ notice to prepare for the implementation of any proposals.”

This latest announcement from Minister McDougall states that the government has “taken the decision to proceed with the reforms, but with two changes.”  The first of these is that, although the requirement for small companies and micro-entities to file profit and loss accounts will go ahead, they will be able to opt out of having these published on the public register. Secondly, the requirement that companies file through third-party software in iXBRL format will also go ahead but, “to give companies and software providers more time to prepare, we will postpone implementing these reforms by one year, from April 2027 to April 2028.” The Institute’s concern on this latter point has always been the relatively high cost of filing through a software provider when compared with the current system and I am grateful to all those who responded with information about the costs that they have been quoted. This was fed back, on an anonymised basis, to the government. They have undertaken to “continue to engage with stakeholders as we prepare the necessary secondary legislation and proceed to implement these important reforms” and the Institute will continue to be part of that process. A Companies House statement provides more information.

Of interest to working on filing corporate documents

On 11 June, the team at Companies House notified the Institute that they are “currently experiencing a delay with processing filings” and asked us to let members know.

The position is that “We are receiving filings, but they’re being queued and are not currently being processed. As a result, these queued filings will not appear on the API or web services until after this issue is resolved. We’re advising customers to continue to file as normal, though it may take longer than usual for these filings to appear on the register after submission. As a result, we will not be able to process same day filings until further notice … We’ll share further updates as soon as possible; these will also be published on our GOV.UK services page.”